FICTION 1

Fiction 1. A film by Hugo Arcier. 2011.Original music by Jean-Christophe Feldhandler. Sound Engineer: Francois Vatin.

This full 3D computer graphics film draws from the events that struck Japan in March 2011, and more specifically, the way the events were covered in the media.

Three-dimensional computer graphics are not a simple recording of reality, but are calculated images, simulated by computers. Through a disturbing mirror effect, they help account for the “unreality” of images that linger on after certain catastrophic events. Ultimately, for the foreign audience of the March 2011 tsunami, what really remains from the images disseminated in the media is no more than a series of scenes of “action” and desolation — the wave that struck and the devastation that it left in its wake.

The analytic dynamics upon which 3D computer graphics are based, and the need for the artist to retreat from the immediate present and stand back, present the audience with a synthetic rendition in which primitive emotion no longer paralyzes thought in the face of catastrophe. This allows viewers to move away from the continuous flow — mediatized but also literally represented in the film — that carries them away and thereby provides a chance to find a place for a special kind of reflection, one that nourishes humaneness and the ability to reason.

These computer graphics dissect reality, as the scalpel of an anatomist might do to reveal the hidden parts of the body. They rid the catastrophic event of the overstated layers depicted in the media images and commentary.

From the profusion of images extracted from real-world events, this video reconstructs an image of the tsunami aimed at depicting this event in all its truth.

A stripped-down image, without speech, without words, a pensive evocation of the tsunami: a quintessence of reality.

Despite their fictional nature, aren’t 3D computer graphics a means of reactivating anesthetized thoughts, for regenerating meaning, and by their power of abstraction, for making the invisible visible?